Denys Wilkinson Building, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH
Professor Debora Sijacki, University of Cambridge
Abstract
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a stunning technological achievement.
It is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built and has sensitivity up to
three orders of magnitude higher in parts of the infrared than its predecessors. JWST
promises to be a formidable cosmic `time machine’ allowing us to peer back in time
to only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the very first stars,
galaxies and supermassive black holes emerged from the `Dark Ages’. The first
results have already stirred the observational and theoretical communities, with
spectacular discoveries bound to come in the next few years.
In this talk I will review the state-of-the-art in our theoretical efforts to understand the
physics governing the evolution of the very first cosmic structures from the time of the
`Dark Ages’. I will discuss the complex interplay of galaxies and supermassive black
holes in the early Universe, from the formation of dwarf galaxies hosting perhaps the
elusive intermediate mass black holes, to the most massive proto-clusters harbouring
‘gargantuan’ black holes. I will emphasize what we can learn from the latest
cosmological simulations of these objects in conjunction with the incoming JWST
data. Finally, I will also discuss synergies of JWST with other upcoming space
missions, such as Athena and LISA, which will fully unlock the multi-messenger view
of our Universe.